Whilst reading this month’s Art World, I noticed that two of the artists I was most taken with were both shown by the Kate MacGarry gallery in London. It turns out that the gallery has quite an interesting roster of artists, including several who use fabric in a fine art context, which is always good to see. However, the artist I am most impressed with (and the reason I bought Art World magazine in the first place) is Matt Bryans, a London based artist who works with simple everyday materials like newsprint and aluminium foil.

Matt Bryans: Untitled 2006, erased newspaper cuttings.
Unknown photographer

I wish I’d made these incredible erased newspaper works. Bryans collects discarded newspapers, cuts out the photos and then partially erases them. The combination of the act of physically erasing - a process that’s been interesting me for a while now - with the intrinsically ephemeral nature of newspapers on their daily journey into oblivion is very seductive to me. I love the idea of taking paper that is already thin and cheap and making it even more fragile by rubbing away at it. A bit of an art conservationist’s nightmare, of course, since woodpulp newspapers are notoriously weak and filled with acid but how wonderful that the results are these visually strong, hauntingly strange and eerily poetic works.

Matt Bryans: Untitled 2008, erased newspaper cuttings.
Image by Oak Taylor Smith

Matt Bryans: Untitled 2004, erased newspaper cuttings.
Unknown photographer

Looking at them, I was reminded of the cultural violence of the Reformation which destroyed so much Catholic art in Britain and remains a huge scar across British art history. It’s not unusual to visit churches and find empty plinths where statues of saints once stood or sculptures and paintings where faces have been scratched or chiselled out or painted over.

Bryans is clearly a very process-based artist - his huge rolled ball of aluminium involved four people rolling a massive 27km of foil for 8 days, apparently it was quite difficult to stop it forming a square. I love the absurdity of taking metal that has been deliberately made into thin sheets and then reforming it into a large, heavy solid object by hand. Of course, he could have melted and then cast the aluminium foil into a perfect sphere but it’s the laborious hand rolling aspect that really makes this work for me.

Matt Bryans: Untitled 2008, aluminium foil.
Image by Oak Taylor Smith

His smaller aluminium wall works were made by rolling foil into balls, melting them and then hitting them with a hammer to flatten them before soldering the hundreds of resulting “fragile but surprisingly heavy” circles to the wall.

Matt Bryans: Untitled 2008, aluminium foil.
Image by Oak Taylor Smith

He’s showing at Kate MacGarry from 17th October to 23rd November, I shall have to make an effort to get over to London to see it.

Tracey Emin: 20 Years at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

Visiting this retrospective was primarily valuable because it confirmed for me that I just don’t rate Tracey Emin. When someone’s whole shtick is an emotional outpouring, it’s a bit of a problem if the viewer doesn’t feel anything. I didn’t hate the art, I just didn’t care about most of it; instead I walked around the exhibition feeling uninvolved and rather bored.

The problem is that Emin’s work is so autobiographical that it’s like reading someone else’s diary or worse, being grabbed by the collar and forced to listen to a drunken rendition of someone else’s tedious problems.

I suspect that to be a great artist, you need to transcend the self and tap into something bigger. Emin seems - so far - to be unable to take that leap. I learnt that she loved her gran; that she has a cat; that her dad brings her flowers; that one of her abortions was traumatic; that her bed got messy and that her favourite uncle died in a car crash - but I didn’t learn anything new about myself or the human condition. In my opinion, art needs to connect with the viewer, to touch something in them, to resonate, to disturb or to enlighten: apart from one work, Emin’s art did none of this for me.

For something that purports to be going deep, her work is remarkably stuck on the surface. I was reading textile pieces that said things like, “I feel so fucking lonely” and thinking, “yeah, we all do sometimes, so what?”

There were a couple of pieces that I responded to, mostly her later work, which suggests that she may be improving. I sort of liked her rickety rollercoaster, the newer white and cream blankets and the little monoprints of birds but even these were nothing to write home about.

That said, I do appreciate the casual and forthright use of stitching on her signature appliquéd blanket pieces. I’ve always liked the way that Emin uses textiles in such a confident fashion - unlike many other female artists working with stitch (myself included!) she never seems to get hung up on the domestic and feminine history of fabric; she just cracks on and does it with a ’sod anyone who thinks sewing isn’t real art’ attitude! I am grateful to her for that because I think she makes it easier for the rest of us.

Tracey Emin: Hellter Fucking Skelter

The piece I liked best was a video work from 1995, the well-known, Why I Never Became A Dancer. The story of her early teenage sexuality and how she was punished for it strongly resonated with me. The tattered, grainy images of Margate shot on Super 8 film are very evocative and the ending, where Emin dances her heart out in defiance of those who tormented her, is genuinely filled with hope and joy. There’s something more than pure autobiography here and if Emin could access that more often, she might become the talented artist she seems to think she is. But as it stands, it’s the only really good piece in the whole retrospective.

For me the major problem is the literalness of Emin’s work; if she could take her raw emotions and her autobiographical objects and transform them into something greater than the sum of their parts then it might work. As it is, I’m not sure that what she’s doing is even art: most of the time it feels more like art therapy - just an exhibitionist museum to the self. In short, I feel that on leaving an exhibition, my dominant thought should not be, “well hey, at least she has great tits!”

I’ve always thought that Emin could be good if she could just get the hell over herself. It’s interesting to compare her to someone like Louise Bourgeois, who has also extensively and obsessively mined her emotions and her past but to far greater and more lasting effect. I once saw a show of Bourgeois’ art at the Serpentine that disturbed me so much that half way through I had to go outside for some fresh air. On the evidence of this show, Emin has a long way to go before she’ll have the same effect.

If you want to see it, the exhibition is on at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh until November 9th.

A ROUND UP OF OTHER REVIEWS

Rather damning review from The Times and a slightly more sympathetic one from The Herald.

Emin talking about the work to The Sunday Herald.

Problematic interview with the artist where she comes across as infuriatingly arrogant. This bit made me particularly loopy!

Some people might find an unmade bed studenty and corny. But Emin is absolutely adamant that “taste cannot get mixed up with what’s good and what’s bad”. There is a definite standard. Quality control. But presumably there are great artists out there, undiscovered? “No. They’d have made it if they were any good.” I wonder how she can possibly say that. It shows enormous faith in the establishment for someone supposedly so anarchic. “Why would I be anti-establishment when the establishment is so good to me?” she demands.

This is just so monumentally stupid - being good at playing the art world game is NOT the same as being a good artist.

Sometimes I come across an artist who’s ploughing very similar ground to me and occasionally I find someone who’s working with the same materials as me. However, I think that Bird Ross and I may actually be sharing a single brain!

I was looking through old copies of Fiberarts Magazine to see if there was anything I needed to photocopy for my sketchbook, when I spotted a small photograph of a ball of knotted string by Ross.

Bird Ross: 6000 Knots

Anxious that I might have accidentally copied her string work when I came up with the idea for 3 Score & 10, I checked the front of the magazine, but it dated from 2005 and a quick search through my sketchbooks revealed that I was already making 3 Score in Jan 2003.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10

Rather oddly, Ross’ 6000 Project using knotted string was about 9/11, which of course, I’ve also done a series about. Here’s what Ross wrote about her project:

From the four airplanes (266), the confirmed dead (201), the 5422 people still missing and those that died at the Pentagon (188). It equals a little over 6000. As of today 6077. I wanted to know what 6000 looked like. How can anyone possibly imagine what 6000 of anything looks like, let alone people. What would 6000 names struck from the pages of a phonebook look like? What would it look like in terms of their handprints, their footprints, in terms of the number of people that miss them? It’s like nothing we can imagine. This was my attempt to imagine.
18 September 2001

And here’s what I wrote about my 3,533 (Requiem) piece:

I sat in the space and burnt 3,533 matches over the space of four days. This number is the current estimated number of victims of the terrorist attacks. The matches were then laid out so that both the scale of the numbers and the individuality of each match could be seen. The thing that I really couldn’t grasp about the attacks was the sheer scale. I needed to make work that encompassed those numbers and I thought if I could see objects laid out then I might begin to understand the loss involved.

Of course, I’ve never imagined that I was the only artist who took this approach, I’ve seen other 9/11 counting projects; it’s a pretty natural response for visual people trying to get their heads around the scale of something like this. Still, when I went onto Ross’ website and found that as part of her ‘counting the dead’ project she’d also used burnt matches, I was slightly spooked.

Bird Ross: 6000 Matches

Kirsty Hall: 3,533 (Requiem) in progress

Then I spotted her time clock piece and just started laughing because several days ago I wrote in my notebook, “I should get one of those old fashioned work clocks so that I can punch in and out when I’m pinning”.

Oh, and I’ve also had ideas about using layers of sellotape - guess what, so has Ross!

Bird Ross: Wounded

How crazy is this! Bird Ross and I have never met, I wasn’t aware of her work before this and I don’t imagine for one minute that she was aware of mine but we’re clearly tuned into the same art wavelength! I’m sitting here just giggling because it’s so weird.

My favourite piece of hers is this beautiful little folded paper piece called It All Adds Up. It’s clearly a till receipt and since it’s part of the 6000 series, I’m guessing that it’s folded 6000 times.

Bird Ross: It All Adds Up

Isn’t that lovely. I like the way it’s encased in the narrow glass or perspex vitrine, it sets off the piece so well.

Right, I’m just off to check one more time that there are no pins on Ross’ website!

It’s National Shed Week. What, you didn’t know that Britain has a National Shed Week? Shame on you! There’s a blog and everything.

The winner of this year’s best shed competition is Tim, a man who has combined two great British passions to create a Pub Shed.

Images from readersheds.co.uk

This isn’t the only pub shed I’ve heard about; a friend of my mum and dad has a small ‘cricket pavillion’ shed in his garden, complete with beer on tap. And yes, there is also an area to play cricket, although I believe that they often go straight to the beer part. You have to make your own entertainment when you live in a small Scottish village…

There are a ton of other inventive sheds on the shed website. including this fabulous Tardis one.

Image from readersheds.co.uk

In fact, there are so many Tardis sheds that they have their own category. but I particularly like this one because of this quote from the female owner, “I don’t think of it as just a shed - more a David Tennant trap.”

Some of their sheds are a bit posh but as a fan of wabi-sabi, I prefer the more ramshackle versions like this one or this. Some sheds are particularly organic. This one makes me envious - I’d absolutely love it if mine had a living turf roof but it’s pretty far down the list of gardening priorities.

And of course, we can’t talk about sheds without mentioning some art inspired by the humble shed.

I find most traditional shed paintings a little boring but I was quite taken with the naive style of allotment painter, Chris Cyprus.

Simon Thackray’s photograph of his shed door inspired him to start The Shed, an unusual series of music, poetry and art events in his small rural community.

Simon Starling’s Turner Prize winning installation, Shedboatshed started life as a Swiss shed that he turned into a boat.

Image from Tate website, unknown photographer

He sailed the resulting boat containing the remaining shed parts down the Rhine to the venue where he was exhibiting before rebuilding it into a shed. I have to say that the confidence of this project impresses me, I’m not entirely sure I’d want to set sail in anything I’d built! Loathe as I am to link to the Mirror newspaper, this attempt to replicate the project made me laugh.

Cornelia Parker’s famous piece Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View involved the British Army blowing up a garden shed that Parker had filled with a collection of objects sourced from jumble sales, charity shops and the sheds of the artist and her friends. The resulting charred remains were collected and hung around a single light bulb.

Images from Tate website, unknown photographer

Sheds, what’s not to love?

I went along to the Spike Island Open on Friday evening. Unfortunately I wasn’t really in the mood, so I didn’t get as much out of it as I’d hoped. However, there were some artists who impressed me…

Ceramicist Karen Welsh was showing an unsettling series of domestic porcelain featuring little doll hands and feet. I especially loved the tiny little milk jugs with a hand instead of a handle. Unfortunately the only photos I could find were tiny, so you’ll have to go to her website to look.

I’ve been aware of Philippa Lawrence’s work for a while now, ever since I saw her stunning gilded lightbulbs in [AN] Magazine a few years ago.

Philippa Lawrence: Glow

For this event, she was showing some wonderful melted lightbulbs (they’d clearly been slumped in a kiln) and large photographs of her wrapped tree pieces.

Philippa Lawrence: Bound

Keep an eye on this one, she’s definitely an artist to watch!

Patrick Haines makes gorgeous cast sculptures based on birds and deliciously spiky houses from thorn branches. I love his stuff because he such has a light hand: his work captures the essence of birds, rather than being literal and boring copies. As a birdwatcher, I appreciate this feeling of a bird that’s only just alighted on a branch and is just about to flit off again - there’s a real sense of movement in his work.

Patrick Haines: Blackthorn and Swallow

Nicola Donovan was my favourite artist of the night, she makes edgy works in textile that references clothing and childhood toys and her sinister but funny fetish rats made from black vinyl and leather knocked me for six. Unfortunately they’re so new that they’re not online yet (I overheard her telling someone that she’d finished the last one the night before the private view - btdt!). She makes works with pins too.

Nicola Donovan: The fur sedition-21st century silver fox

Kate Raggett was showing her latest works, ink drawings based on visits to sacred landscapes. I’m a big fan of her drawings, I own a small one and it’s my favourite piece in my art collection. I couldn’t find an example of her most recent drawings but this is typical of her work.

Kate Raggett: Discatom

Jessica Bartlett makes exquisite drawings by burning images of natural forms into thickly primed canvas.

Jessica Bartlett: Feather

Invariably, there were several other artists that I wanted to showcase but who don’t have an online presence - their loss!

José Leonilson was a Brazilian artist who died tragically young in 1993. He was only 36 when he died from AIDS, part of that generation of male artists that we lost far too soon.

His work has the sort of quiet melancholy that I always admire.

José Leonilson: 34 with Scars, 1991

I love this piece, especially the indelicate, puckered, slightly haphazard embroidery and the way the fabric is not stretched taut but instead is just hanging loosely on the wall. It’s pretty obvious why I like his work, since it relates quite strongly to my own, particularly my thread drawings:

Kirsty Hall: Parse, 2007

There are correspondences between our respective drawings too - although this small watercolour and ink drawing is more figurative than my style, I could easily imagine it on a Diary Project envelope.

José Leonilson: Desire is a Blue Lake, 1989

I like the emptiness in this drawing, it takes a certain amount of artistic nerve to leave a lot of white space on the page.

Before I went to Australia I was lucky enough to get two You Make My Day awards. The first was from the lovely Cally, who’s been mentioned here several times in the past. The second was from Australian artist, Feed The Dog (check out her gorgeous cushions on Etsy).

Thank you both, I appreciate it and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond.

“You make my day-Award” works like this:
1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Display the “You Make my Day Award” logo. (Optional)
4. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news.

So I now need to pass on the favour and give them out to five other people. Not all of these are blogs but they are all sites that I regularly visit and get excited about.

You Make My Day Awards

I’ve written about Suzi Blu before and I’m still a big fan. Her videos make me laugh but they also inspire me to get off my butt and into the studio. I admire her sense of fun, her utter passion about art and creativity and the way she just gets on and does things.

I love Elsa Mora’s quirky style. Elsa is a prolific and dedicated blogger and I admire the commitment and honesty she brings to writing about both her art and her life.

Eliza from Back Yard is to blame for getting me into the 101 Things meme and for that she certainly deserves an award! She’s been quite unwell lately but before appendicitis struck (ow, get better soon Eliza), she was blogging up a storm about her creative process.

Goblins are traditionally the low level bad guys in role playing and video games - just there to be killed for points. Goblins is a wonderful web comic that turns that convention on its head and explores life from their point of view. I once had a dream where I was Queen Of The Goblins, so it makes me happy to see my little guys getting the love they deserve. Funny, poignant, hard hitting and beautifully drawn and written, this comic continually amazes me with its quality. Although it’s far from daily, it always makes my day when a new episode appears and it’s well worth your time to start at the beginning of the archives and catch up with the story so far.

If you’re a knitter, crocheter or otherwise interested in fibre arts and you haven’t signed up for Ravelry yet, you absolutely must. I love it there and spend far too much time on the forums when I should be in my studio (bad, naughty artist!)

So there you go, 5 great places to check out on this lovely Sunday afternoon. I’m suitably inspired: I’m going upstairs to my studio to get cracking with some work - or at least some tidying!

Up in the Blue Mountains doing the tourist thing for a couple of days, so here’s a post that I prepared earlier…

Rust Belt is a collaborative project between jewellers, Anna Bario and Page Neal. Their aim is to explore ways in which jewellery can be made from “re-purposed materials using low-impact, environmentally conscious practices.”

I first came across their work on the Daily Poetics blog, where I was very taken with their wonderful and innovative use of glass bottles to package their jewellery. I’ve never seen jewellery shown this way before and I think it’s totally inspired. It’s both practical and beautiful - the jewellery is protected in transit and then you have a stunning way to display it when you’re not wearing it.

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Packaging

However, once I visited their site, I was even more impressed by the environmental commitment at the heart of their work and the depth of their research. As someone who dabbles in silversmithing, the pollution caused by mining metals is a concern for me, so it’s absolutely fantastic to see other artists tackling these issues head on. If you’re a contemporary metalworker, then their blog is a must-read but I’m sure it would be interesting to non-metalworkers too.

Oh, and did I mention that their jewellery is utterly lovely…

I particularly love their sparse graphical pieces made with vintage chains.

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Red Angled Knottedrush

They also seem to be melting down and reusing metals, as in this gorgeous organic bracelet:

Rust Belt Alluvial Collection: Gale

It’s particularly great to see artists working with recycled materials who also have a very contemporary style - a lot of objects made with recycled or re-purposed materials can be a bit ‘worthy’ and ‘clunky’ for my taste but while reusing existing metal is absolutely central to this work, I like that it doesn’t completely dominate the aesthetic.

So, a useful resource for metalworkers and environmentalists and they make beautiful work - what’s not to like?

Despite the heat, I managed to get over to Sydney to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art today. There are currently two exhibitions on: Force Field, a retrospective by Australian artist, Fiona Hall and an exhibition of Aboriginal Bark Paintings.

This was the first time that I’d seen Fiona Hall’s work and I had mixed feelings about it. The pieces I liked the most were the ones where her technique and obvious skill worked in conjunction with her ideas rather than being overwhelmed by them.

I found the pieces made from tupperware consistently witty and engaging. My favourite installation in the show was Cell Culture, a vitrine containing abstract animal forms made from tupperware and thousands of beads. Being able to recognise many specifically Australian birds and animals added an extra dimension to the work for me and I’m sure I enjoyed it more than I would have before I visited Australia.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture

This image was too wide and I’m working on an unfamiliar laptop and don’t fancy hunting for editing software, so just click on it for the bigger version.

Fiona Hall: Cell Culture, detail

I also enjoyed an installation that featured a wall of tupperware containing lights that blinked on and off in sequence - simple, yet strangely hypnotic.

Paradisus Terestris, her large series of sardine tins containing metal reliefs of human body parts that blossom out into intricately cut metal plants was also enticing.

Fiona Hall: Paradisus Terestris

This work reminded me of The Song of Songs in the Bible - using plants to describe the human figure or vice versa is an ancient story but one that Hall manages to make refreshing here through sheer audacity of technique; you can hardly believe the detail and the fineness of cutting involved in the plants, while the parts of human figures are breathtaking in their minimalist assurance.

Two large installations containing multiples cast in yellow soap also caught my attention, as did the nests made from shredded bank notes and some very beautiful goache paintings of trade plants on bank notes. For me, Hall is at her best when making sculpture, although I also enjoyed her etchings, drawings and some of the photograph and video pieces.

Unfortunately, her work didn’t always quite hit the mark and although there was much that engaged and amused me, there was nothing that absolutely knocked me dead. Her work was often just a little bit too obvious for my tastes; I felt that she often spoilt the work by over-egging the pudding. For example, a set of figurative sculptures made from knitted video tape seemed fairly effective until I noticed that the images related far too directly to the film they’d been made from - i.e. a foot coming out of the box for the film, They Died With Their Boots On. I prefer work to be a little more mysterious and I don’t mind having to work at understanding art - generally, I’m far more tolerant of ambiguity than I am of being preached at and I felt that Hall’s work fell into the didactic far too often. She is clearly an artist who is strongly engaged with her subject matter - colonialism; sexuality and the interaction between people and the environment - but I personally believe that it’s a mistake to let your politics overwhelm your art.

There are a couple of interesting articles about the artist here and here. This quote made me laugh:

“I’m just relieved that I live in an era where, particularly for women, it’s easy to have a life as an artist. Otherwise I don’t know what I would be good for,” Hall says.

Boy can I relate to that!

The exhibition runs until 1st June 2008 and despite my reservations, I do think it’s well worth a visit if you’re in the Sydney area. This post is already quite long and it’s late here, so I’ll save the review of the other exhibition for another day.

My goodness, Kiama is stunning. We’ve got scorching weather so I’ve bought a ridiculously large hat to try and stop from burning any more than I already have. My nose is peeling now - always a great look for anyone! I’m hoping it will have improved by the wedding.

I’m enjoyed soaking up all the new flora and fauna, I’m sure it will inspire a lot of new drawings when I get home. We went swimming in the ocean rock pool down by Kiama harbour yesterday - watching the sun on the gently rippling water, I couldn’t help thinking of David Hockney’s Californian paintings of swimming pools.

Kiama also has a wonderful natural blowhole that sends whooshes of water up into the air and makes momentary rainbows as the sun refracts through the spray. It made me think about Tacita Dean’s recent work where she went chasing the green ray in the sunset.

Apparently, you can take an artist on holiday but you can’t stop them thinking about art…

Ariana Page Russell is a fine example of an artist really working with what she’s got - in her case, a skin condition called dermatographia. Here she explains it in her own words:

My own skin frequently blushes and swells. I have dermatographia, a condition in which one’s immune system exhibits hypersensitivity, via skin, that releases excessive amounts of histamine, causing capillaries to dilate and welts to appear (lasting about thirty minutes) when the skin’s surface is lightly scratched. This allows me to painlessly draw patterns and words on my skin, which I then photograph.

Ariana Page Russell - Index

Russell also takes these images one step further creating temporary tattoos and wallpaper from the photographs of her own skin welts.

Ariana Page Russell - Pivot (detail)

Wow, Dan at Empty Easel has included this blog in his 8 Must-read Art Blogs for 2008.

I’m hugely and immensely flattered to have been selected, especially since I’m in such illustrious company (please do head over to the link and check out the other blogs mentioned, they’re all worth a look).

Here’s what Dan wrote about me:

“Up all Night Again - This elegantly designed blog is authored by Kirsty Hall, an artist and art curator from the UK. Not only will you find frequent updates about her life and art but also some excellent articles for artists just starting out online.”

OK, I’m blushing now…

Of course, I am not responsible for the elegant design - the credit for that goes to my talented web designer, Steve Taylor. If you’re in the market for an art website, he does fantastic work and is very easy to work with: I highly recommend him. In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that Steve is a personal friend whom I’ve known for many years but he is also superb at what he does.

…….

Dan also encourages us all to make our own lists of Must Read Art Blogs, so here are mine. Of course, there are loads of other wonderful art blogs that I read as well but these 8 very different blogs are the ones that I absolutely wouldn’t be without. My criteria: blogs that are updated on a regular basis and inspire me either visually, intellectually or preferably both.

My 8 Must Read Art Blogs for 2008

Dear Ada is one of my daily reads, she always has links to great artists and she’s genuinely enthusiastic and insightful about the art she promotes. Since we seem to have quite similar tastes, the artists I link to on this blog are often ones I’ve seen first on her blog (so thanks for that, Ada!).

Cally Creates - I know that Cally thinks she hasn’t been a very good blogger recently because she’s been so ill but she’s still one of my absolute favourite art reads. I love her photos and the way she writes about her own and other people’s art is always real, honest and engaging.

Suzi Blu - I just love her funny, quirky videos on life, art and journalling: I find her ‘just do it’ attitude very refreshing and inspirational.

Making A Mark - I’m with Dan on this one, Katherine Tyrrell is a definite must-read for the depth of her knowledge and her considered articles on the art world and her own and other artists’ work. Sit down with a cup of tea and a biscuit and enjoy her posts, which are often longer than the average blogger but well worth your time.

ArtBizBlog - Alyson Stanfield writes and podcasts about all aspects of the business side of art. I know many of us groan when we hear the words ‘business’ but Alyson consistently makes it seem both interesting and achievable.

Gaping Void is a consistently high quality blog from successful cartoonist, Hugh MacLeod. He’s made a career out of drawing cartoons on the back of business cards but I like his writing too. His posts always makes me think and I like that he’s coming at the world of art from such a different direction to me.

Ursula Vernon never fails to make me laugh. I’ve been following her blog on Livejournal for several years now and it’s great to see her becoming more successful with every passing year. As talented a writer as she is in visual art, she makes very different art to me but I love her stuff because it’s funny, well done and she’s never embarrassed by the fact that her muse drives her to paint peculiar vegetables, cute but perplexed animals and wombats.

Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien - This is in French and sadly I don’t speak more than a couple of words but it’s never marred my enjoyment of this gloriously illustrated blog.

So that’s my 8, anyone else fancy posting their lists? If you do, then Dan would like to hear from you.

I’ve just discovered the sculpture and steel jewellery of artist, Megan Auman. I don’t know how I’ve missed seeing it before because she’s been mentioned by Cally, whose blog I read regularly.

Long Leaf Necklace’ by Megan Auman

Isn’t this fab. Despite studying and making silver jewellery, I’m not much of a jewellery wearer but I’d make an exception for this. I particularly love that it’s made from steel instead of a precious metal, that really adds to the aesthetic for me - the stark black against the white makes me sigh with visual lust. I’ve been playing around with lots of colour in my new art journal lately but apparently I’m not over my monochrome thing and honestly, I don’t want to be - colour fills a certain place in my soul but black and white will always own my heart.

I had already noted the resemblance of Megan’s work to my own drawings but I was amused to discover that she also did a smaller series of daily drawings in 2007. Megan also has an interesting blog that’s worth a look - apparently she’s going to be making a life size sofa out of metal, I look forward to seeing it.

Lately it seems that most of my art conversations have been happening inside the computer. However, yesterday afternoon I was fortunate enough to meet up with artist, Camilla Stacey for tea and cake.

Camilla and I used to work quite closely together when we were both curating shows over at the Here Gallery, the artist-run space that Camilla was instrumental in founding. We haven’t seen as much of each other lately because we’re both taking a curating break and we live in different towns, so it was great to catch up over cheesecake and hot chocolate. The conversation ranged from our lives to our work and back again; we talked about whether I need to continue with obsessive repetition in my work and Camilla explained the rationale behind her latest ceramic pieces.

Because it’s my birthday on Saturday, Camilla brought me these fabulous thistles - she said they reminded her of my Diary Project drawings and I can see what she means.

Having people who ‘get’ your work, whether in real life or in the computer, is such a gift for any artist and I am blessed to know many people with whom I can have these sort of deep conversations. I hope you all have real life friends that you can talk art and eat cake with.

The Decorated Journal by Gwen Diehn is a book that focuses on art journalling.

The book is divided into sections, the first is an extensive exploration of the different materials used in art journalling including paper, pencils, paints, pens, glue and other commonly used materials. This section is, to my mind, the strongest in the book. It contains handy tables that show the advantages and disadvantages of different types of glue, a section on the paint colours you’ll need to be able to mix a good palette, lots of information about the different grades of paper, explanations of the properties of various different materials and clear advice on what to buy and why. There’s even a page on making your own ink and paint from naturally occurring pigments that you’ve gathered! I also like the way she emphasises investing in a few well chosen, quality materials rather than getting suckered into buying endless new products that are actually quite limited in scope.

In the second section of the book, Diehn describes different types of journalling. She categorises journals into 7 different types and provides techniques that she thinks are particularly appropriate for each. I wasn’t totally convinced by her categories and most of the stuff I objected to occurred in this section.

The third section of the book is called ‘Pages In Stages’ and Diehn splits the working process into ’starters, middles and toppings’.explores how to work with the different levels of the page through techniques like layering, collage and using text. This is one of the shorter sections in the book since it’s basically reprising things that have already been described in earlier sections.

The final section of the book deals with some basic bookbinding - Diehn is a big fan of making your own journals so that you can control the size and type of paper and she demonstrates how to make several simple handmade books plus how to customise existing journals and reuse the covers from old hardback books. I have several other bookbinding books already so there wasn’t a whole lot here that was new to me but the information seemed clear and competent and it’s obvious that it’s something she’s passionate about.

Although there is undoubtedly much of value here, this is not a book that I can wholeheartedly recommend. The main problem I had with this book was Diehn’s tone, which I found overly lecturing and didactic. It’s very clear that she feels there’s a right and a wrong way to do things - for example, she assumes that paper buckling is always to be avoided but personally, I’ve found that buckled paper can be an interesting design element on a journal page rather than a problem.

Sure, it’s important to learn ‘the correct way’ to do things and I can understand her desire for ‘good practice’ but I also felt she could have recognised that art journalling is an expressive, experimental and free space for the artist, where the rules don’t always need to apply. It’s not that what she says is necessarily wrong - I agree with many of her opinions - but the way she says them invariably seemed to get my back up. Reading her words made me feel as though I was back at art college again. This isn’t surprising since Diehn is a tutor at an art college but I didn’t find it at all helpful or inspiring. Since I’m currently trying to unlearn quite a few of those art school conventions, I don’t need this approach. I took particular exception to her saying things like “you have to earn the right to draw the details”: I think that’s a staggeringly unhelpful thing to say to anyone, whatever stage of drawing they’re at.

In addition, I wasn’t particularly blown away by the journal pages shown; they often seemed to fall into a particular style and I felt there could have been a lot more variety. There also frequently seemed to be a disconnect between the illustrations and the text and it was sometimes hard to work out why a journal page had been selected to show a particular technique or idea.

However, many people might find her ‘voice of authority’ reassuring and comforting rather than invasive and irritating, as I did. If you want a book that tells you to ‘buy this colour’ and ‘don’t do that’, then this would be a good book to invest in because, despite my personal reservations, there is a huge amount of good information in here. In particular, if you’re new to art or art journalling and want to know about different materials and to be talked through the basics, then this book has a lot to recommend it. I just didn’t like the feeling of being talked down to but I’m well aware that this may be my personal hang-up. Certainly the book gets generally positive reviews on Amazon.com and elsewhere.

I borrowed this book from the library and while I’m glad that I’ve read it because I did learn some interesting new stuff, I was even more glad that I hadn’t bought it or added it to my Christmas list because personally I would have been disappointed. That said, I’m sure that many people would find it invaluable but I’d advise getting it from the library or checking it out in a bookshop before you buy to make sure it’s right for you.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be a recipient of a beautiful hand-bound book by Kaija as part of the Paying It Forward exchange. I’ve been putting off blogging about it because a) I haven’t been able to get a decent photo of the book and b) I wasn’t sure if any of Kaija’s other recipient’s read my blog and I didn’t want to spoil anyone else’s surprise.

However, since Kaija has just blogged about it, I guess it’s OK to go public about it now.

My book was beautifully wrapped…

And unsurprisingly, there was much squealing when I undid the ribbon to discover this…

Kaija took much better pictures than me, you can see the stitching and the image properly on her photograph.

Handbound book by Kaija, photograph by Kaija

Isn’t that stunning! The book opens completely flat, which is very helpful in an art journal and I love the image of the bare tree and the way the stitching goes into the cover. What you can’t see in the photos is that the pages inside are also brown paper - Kaija somehow miraculously knew without being told that I adore notebooks with brown pages. I may be visiting Australia in the spring for my brother’s wedding, so I have decided to save this very special book to use as a travel diary.

I can’t even begin to describe how fantastically well-made this book is and how wonderful it feels and looks in real life. It’s way beyond my own very limited book-binding skills and I’m quite in awe of her talents. I can only suggest that you all head over to her Etsy shop and indulge in one of her very reasonably priced treasures.

Now I just need to get my own exchange items out to my three Paying It Forward recipients; Kim, Liz and Tina. I have started work on my items but it’ll probably be at least another couple of weeks before I get them in the post; I’m never quick about these sort of things.

I think I just fell a little bit in love. Suzi Blu is a cute young art goddess who makes short videos about art journalling that she puts up on YouTube.

I just love her quirkiness and her passion. She’s done lots of videos - there’s a list here - and I’m having a happy evening working my way through them.

OK, I have a BIG confession to make. All through college, I kept immaculate, beautifully presented and very professional A4 sketchbooks. Looking up at the shelves above me, I see fifteen of them in an ordered line, their spines labelled with the dates. They’re almost identical - always portrait style and usually black, with a couple of patterned ones when I couldn’t find black ones.

Not for me the messy, spilling out at the seams, arty sketchbook barely held together with bits of string or rubber bands. Although I adore that style when I look at other people’s journals, at the time I just couldn’t bring myself to be that messy. Instead, my sketchbooks closed tidily on pages filled with perfectly aligned, neatly trimmed images and printed or carefully handwritten thoughts on my art. It’s slightly odd because I’m certainly not a naturally tidy person - maybe I was searching for a safe space within the chaos?

I spent a lot of time on those sketchbooks. I kept huge boxes of trimmed photos that I regularly culled from magazines and I would spend happy hours sorting through them looking for just the right combination of images that would show where my inspiration was coming from. I patiently selected the photos that showed my work to its best advantage, as well as the ‘during’ shots that documented the process and lined them up and taped them in. I added documentation from exhibitions I was involved in and analysed what I could have done better. I went through hundreds of rolls of my beloved double-sided sticky tape. I thought of my sketchbooks as works of art in their own right and they truly are. When I reread them, I can see that they are wonderful objects, as well as being useful documents that accurately chart my artistic process through the years. I’m justifiably proud of them and I love to look up at that neat line of them on my bookshelf.

But… but… but…

I got out of college and my sketchbooks sort of ground to a halt and then stopped almost completely. Every so often I’ll pick up the current one, write an ‘it’s been far too long since I’ve written anything in here’ entry, post in a couple of pictures, write down a few ideas and then guiltily ignore it for another six months. I think I’ve filled nearly two in the last five years - me, an artist who once went through a sketchbook every three months or so! It’s pitiful and it’s been weighing on me a lot recently.

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that my sketchbook use tailed off when I started blogging - a lot of my writing energy undoubtedly went into my online journalling instead. In addition, no longer being in college seemed to take a lot of the ‘people judging me’ energy out of it. There just wasn’t the same drive to do my sketchbooks that there had once been.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never stopped writing down my ideas - I have a little notebook by my bed where most of my art pieces start and another notebook in my handbag to catch the ideas that happen when I’m out of the house and I treasure both of those. I also write ideas on my computer if that’s where I happen to be, keep a card index box of ‘art ideas’ on my desk and for the last two years I’ve been doing a series of ink drawings in an ever increasing pile of A5 cartridge pads.

But those well documented, bright, shiny and oh-so-acceptable sketchbooks - er, not so much! I’m kind of embarrassed about it and I feel guilty and cross with myself. But when I think about sitting down and taping in photos, writing about what I’ve been doing, trimming photocopies and images to fit the pages and lining everything up perfectly - well, my heart just sinks. It feels overwhelming and impossible and it’s time to admit it; something that once brought me genuine joy and satisfaction, now just fills me with dread.

After watching Suzi’s videos, I thought ‘enough already, I’ve got to do something about this situation’. So I picked up the mostly unused moleskine sketchbook sitting next to my computer and let rip with some black goache, white ink pen and a couple of my beloved Inktense pencils. Wham, two pages of art journalling done in about half an hour and boy, do I feel better. No, it’s definitely not my perfect and pristine sketchbook but it’s obvious that the old way isn’t working any more, so I need to try something new.

Our ’shoulds’ can really inhibit our art; they stifle the flow of creativity within us. Yes, it would be nice if I could keep making those beautiful ordered sketchbooks and I probably ’should’ but it’s far more important that I keep my art going. On the first page of my new journal I wrote in coloured pencil “It’s time to get messy” and it is. Perhaps one day those pristine sketchbooks will be right for me again but for now, it’s time to let them go.

Last night I pottered over to my friend Camilla’s private view at the Here Gallery. Unfortunately I got there quite late, which meant that I missed seeing some friends but there was a silver lining because I got to go to the pub with Camilla and a few people afterwards.

The show is called Abracadabra and features work by three different artists - Cindy Jaswal, Claire Platt and of course, Camilla Stacey. It’s a fun little show and well worth a look if you’re in the Bristol area. Interestingly, the show came about after the artists met through the internet - yet another example of how artists can find and develop art opportunities online.

Camilla is showing some of her series of reglazed found porcelain figures against a background of hand made wallpaper. She hunts for little figures in charity shops and then re-paints them with gold lustre glaze and then re-fires them. The glaze seems to make the figures heavy and sometimes slightly melancholic because it’s not a bright gold but more of a dull, thick colour that seems to pull the light into the figures rather than reflecting it. She also had a set of white figures in varying states of decrepitude that she’d cast in plaster. She gave me a little head with a missing nose, which I’ll be putting in my cabinet of curiosities. I hadn’t seen this work before, so I was interested in how it was coming along but I was sad that Camilla hadn’t shown any of her excellent drawings.

Camilla Stacey - Virgin Mary

Claire Platt trained in Bristol but now lives and works in London. She’s showing a large group of her embroideries, drawings and ceramics based on human anatomy. I liked these a great deal, they’re shown in a big group and I love the way they work together. A lot of the pieces have gold thread, are encrusted with sequins or are shown in mirrored or gilt frames - it could be tacky but somehow it really works.

Claire Platt - Installation View

I was a bit naughty and bought myself an early birthday present - one of the most abstract drawings (you can’t see it clearly but it’s the little blue rectangle on the bottom left). Claire, if you happen to read this, I’m thrilled to have got one of your pieces but both Camilla and I think you’re drastically underpricing your work!

If I’d had the money, I would definitely have bought one of Cindy Jarwal’s exquisite ink drawings too. Sadly, although they were very fairly priced at £100, they were just a bit out of my reach - one of the downsides of being an artist is that although you’d happily buy art, you don’t usually have much of a budget for it. I’m not showing Cindy’s work in this post because she asks that people don’t reproduce it without permission but you can see more of it on her Flickr or her website and it’s gorgeous so I strongly encourage you to hop over and have a look. Her style reminded me quite strongly of my own Diary Project drawings, so it’s not surprisingly that I liked them so much. They were my favourite things in the exhibition and I may just have to go back and see if I can buy a piece in instalments. I don’t buy that much art - usually just one or two pieces a year - but I know that I’ll absolutely kick myself if I don’t get one of these.

Here’s a little something for Halloween!

Luke Chueh’s paintings astound me. Glancing at the thumbnails, I thought they might be overly sweet and sentimental - ha, nothing could be further from the truth!

Luke Chueh - 15 Minutes of Fame

Obviously many of his paintings - with their cast of sad bunnies, worried chickens, disturbed monkeys and world-weary teddy bears - explore horror and the darker side of childhood. However, what takes his work up to the next level for me is the expressions on his characters faces; there’s such pathos there but described with such precise and retrained economy. There’s always been something a little tragic about cuddly toys and he exploits this to the full, but his twisted, and often very silly, sense of humour usually stops his work from becoming maudlin. On a technical level, I love his pared-down palette of sombre colours.

Luke Chueh - Monkey Grinder

His work is sometimes available as prints from Munky King and he’s definitely on my list of ‘artists whose work I want to own’.

Luke Chueh - Squid

Having seen the Paying It Forward idea on Artist, Emerging, I immediately wanted to join in, so I headed over to the people Deanna was making things for and was delighted to discover that Kaija from Paperiaarre still had one space. So I’m her third person and I consider myself very lucky because wow, just look at the gorgeous books she makes!

I’ve done a little bit of very simple book binding and it’s a lot of fun but I’ve certainly not made any as luscious as this. She also makes very beautiful handmade brooches.

Anyway, it’s now my turn to pass it on.

Pay It Forward (via Kaija, via Deanna, via Mrs Eliot and so on)*

Here are the rules:

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.

Pretty straightforward huh, I agree to make and send something to the first three people to comment, who then make things for their first three commenters and so on. OK, have at it, people…

EDIT: Even though it looks like I’ve got three responders, one of them is my partner and he doesn’t actually want to take part - he was just responding to the question of who came up with the term ‘paying it forward’ - so, there’s still one spot available.

* I’ve tried to find out who originally started this idea but haven’t been able to follow the thread of connections back far enough. Does anyone know who should get the credit?

Joanne B Kaar is a Scottish artist who works with fibre and bookmaking. In 2006 she completed a three month residency in Durness in Sutherland, which she documented in a fascinating blog.

Joanne B Kaar - Sango Sands Seapapers

During the residency she made a series of books from handmade paper, often using local materials. Some of these books were subjected to pretty harsh treatment like being buried or thrown in the sea! It’s amazing that they’ve survived as well as they have - it’s easy to forget how robust paper can be as a medium.

Sutherland is a place that is very dear to my heart. Most of my childhood holidays were spent in Achnahaird in Ross and Cromarty and every holiday included a day trip to Lochinver in the neighbouring Sutherland. Although it was very close as the crow flies, it was an hour-long drive on a narrow, twisting and often terrifying road. I’ve just checked and according to the AA it’s 16 miles yet takes an hour and 8 minutes - that should give you an idea of just how bad the road is! It was worth it though - not least for the annual visit to Achins Bookshop in Inverkirkaig - apparently the most remote bookshop in the British Isles. I always saved most of my holiday money so that I could splurge on books and I still remember the feeling of deep contentment that walking out with a bag of carefully chosen books gave me. I also have fond memories of standing on the pier in Lochinver watching the fishing boats unloading and sitting on the seafront eating homemade pies from the incredibly good local bakery.

Durness is a lot further up the coast and not somewhere I’ve visited but Joanne’s photographs of the area, with all their Highland familiarity, certainly brought up plenty of nostalgia. I love living in Bristol and feel very at home here, but so many of my creative roots lie in those summer holidays in the Highlands - long days spent damming little streams with my brothers and cousins, building complex sand sculptures with my Dad, riding invisible horses, grinding down sandstone in an attempt to make pigment (I used to pretend I was a neolithic cave painter!), patiently drawing for hours in the caravan on rainy days and writing bad poetry once I was a teenager. For several years now I’ve been needing to reconnect with those roots and I know that I absolutely must make a trip to the Highlands soon because the feeling is getting quite desperate. While I don’t really subscribe to the idea of a ‘muse’, I have learnt over the years that it’s not a good idea to ignore particularly persistent creative cravings.

Where do your creative roots lie? Is it a place? A feeling? A particular smell? A certain kind of pencil or the feel of a fresh sketchbook?

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find out all that much about Dutch artist, Anita Groener but I like the way her work alternates between spareness and complexity.

Anita Groener: Labyrinth IX

Anita Groener - Freeway

These two works form part of the Crossing series. Over the space of three years Groener drove about 12,000 kilometers between The Netherlands (her homeland) and Ireland (her adopted country) and these regular road trips became a huge influence on her studio practice. She describes this series in the following way:

The verb Crossing signifies movement, a movement which is not uniform but which is drawn back and forth. In my drawings I try to capture the delineation of movements of thought processes occurring in space and time, between here and there, between the point of departure and arrival. The journey of the line marks the surface turning it into visual patterns. What you see is a physical manifestation of the layers of routes and directions taken in this process, revealing its manifold meanings.

I’ve found so many stories and links that I’d slung into the folders on my desktop, that the only way to get through them is to do a bit of a round-up. Maybe I’ll make this a weekly feature since I always seem to find far more than will comfortably fit into my regular blogging schedule.

Links

Nick from The Boat Lullabies blog found a fascinating photographic history in a thrift store.

Bob collects pencils - lots and lots of brand name pencils. Now, I like pencils as much as the next artist but this strikes even me as a tad odd. It is a well done site though - I like the regularity of the design and you know what, Bob’s right, these pencils are kind of beautiful when you see them all en masse.

Photographer Helga Steppan, organised all her belongings by colour - the results are stunning.

The Mega Penny Project is a handy way to visualise large numbers.

Such a clever idea - people who’ve matched their screensavers to the background behind their computer so that it looks as though their computer screen is transparent.

I adored this short animation called Hiccups 101 by Jessica Sances.

Craig Robinson has done a series of what he calls ‘lollipops’ - abstracted computer drawings of musicians and pop stars. I was fascinated by how little I needed to identify some of them. I listen to a lot of music on my computer but I don’t watch MTV particularly, so I was surprised at how often the names of musicians instantly popped into my head - even ones I’d never heard sing. Even when I couldn’t remember the name, I’d often still know who it was meant to be - I guess most of us are steeped in celebrity culture whether we want to be or not.

It’s not art related but this YouTube video of a small child trying to communicate something important to his increasingly giggly father makes me laugh hysterically every time I see it.

People

Regular commenter, Tina Mammoser from The Cycling Artist has a good post about avoiding scams which was inspired by this post by Alyson Stanfield.

Ulf Nawrot who did the post-it drawings that I linked to back in August, kindly sent the following clarification on his process:

All my post its were drawn while doing something else in an ad agency: phone calls, meetings, brainstormings-if you are looking close you will find lots of valuable information hidden on these notes like phone numbers, comments etc.-but you will also find my different states of mind, anger, distraction, making fun of people…the whole thing started subconscious like the swirls and ornaments a lot of people draw on desks and everything else in reach when they are doing phone calls.I have been collecting my post its since 1993 and at this point there must be around 25.000 of them.

25,000 of them - wow, way to go, Ulf!

Sheree Rensel commented on this post:

I totally agree with comments presented. I too realize that blogging is very beneficial for aspects related to motivation and building an audience. However, I want to know how blogging has helped your INCOME. How has blogging increased your sales or increased the money you get to support your art?
That is the topic for which I am REALLY interested.

Sheree Rensel: Blue

Ah Sheree, the answer to that would be ‘not at all’ since I’m not currently set up to make money off my art. I am slowly coming to terms with the idea that maybe I should try to make some money from my work but it’s something that I’m still internally struggling with. For a long time I believed that my work was completely unsaleable because of the fragile and often temporary nature of the things that I made. That’s no longer as true as it once was but I’m still trying to reprogramme my brain on this issue. I plan to write more about the issue of money and artists in the future.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that I’m probably not the best person to answer your question!

Fortunately, Katherine from Making A Mark left a long and detailed comment, some of which addressed this issue. I’m reprinting the relevant bits here:

Kirsty - I absolutely agree a blog should be for yourself. I personally am less on reading ‘commercial’ blogs where people are blogging for a business which is not their own or because they think it’s ‘what you have to do’ to sell art. These blogs often seem to run out of steam after a bit.

Blogs which just present work for sale (as one e-bay) are fine by me - but IMO they work so much better with a few details about why the artist chose to paint the picture…

…Re. last comment, here’s my observation. The people who appear to sell consistently using their blogs as part of their marketing are those who do good quality work. (By which I mean good quality work will find a buyer if you market effectively). What a blog maybe does for them is speed up the process of increasing awareness - and then once you’ve attracted people who like watching what you produce then you have a ready market of people who are more likely to buy.

I would agree with this, personally I prefer blogs where the artist is not solely focused on selling, although I have no objections to being gently reminded that they’ve updated their Etsy shop or that a particular piece is available in a commercial gallery. In fact, I definitely think that artists should do that, where applicable.

However, the artists who seem to have the most success online usually seem to take the long view. For example, Camilla Engman is an artist who’s had a lot of success online and she seems to have built up her sales in a gentle and organic way. She cultivates an audience for her work by having relationships with the readers of her chatty and informal blog and maintaining an active Flickr presence including starting a new group called Organised Collection recently. And of course, she makes excellent and consistent work that she offers at a range of prices from affordable calendars and prints to the more expensive original paintings.

Camilla Engman: Collection 2

Engman is a lovely example of how to operate as an artist in the offline world too. We had a show of her work at the Here Gallery and she included a couple of packs of her little prints as a thank-you gift for those of us who’d helped with the show. She’s the only artist I can recall who did something like this and it was certainly appreciated by those of us who unpacked and hung her show, since we were all volunteers and none of us were getting paid. Getting curators and gallery people on your side never hurts!

Sorry about the lack of posts over the weekend, we had visitors and I just didn’t get a spare minute to update.

I’m a big fan of Tara Donovan’s art. I love the way she uses vast accumulations of objects like polystyrene cups, pins, sheets of glass and drinking straws to make dense, layered sculptures. She stacks the objects but then lets them find their own pattern and form.

Tara Donovan: Haze, 2003

I find the way her work refracts colour very interesting, she often uses translucent materials that become subtly coloured when layered in such large quantities. It seems to me that there’s something about the importance of revealing the hidden in her work.

Tara Donovan: Haze, detail, 2003

I must admit that I was envious when I saw her huge block of pins - although I just don’t work on that sort of scale, I love that she does. The pins aren’t held together with anything other than gravity and their own interlocking chaotic mass.

Tara Donovan: Untitled, 2001

If you want to read more about her work, there’s a good review here by Paul Brewer and an artnet interview with Donovan here.

Sorry about the odd formatting on a couple of the images in this post, I can’t work out why it’s doing that or how to fix it.

Artist Annie Vought meticulously cuts paper to make her beautiful and witty wall pieces. Her recent work has concentrated on writing, while previous work explored the human body through cut up anatomy drawings.

Annie Vought: To Do, 2006

As a compulsive list-maker, I just adore the absurdity of this piece - just think of the hours it must have taken to cut away the paper from something as transitory and throwaway as a to-do list. She’s clearly a woman after my own heart!

The use of shadows in these works interests me and I see obvious parallels with my own thread drawings where the shadows also work to complete the image. Unsurprisingly, it also delights me that she uses pins to attach the delicate cut paper to the wall.

Annie Vought: Slightly, 2006

Kirsty Hall: Thread drawing - work in progress

—-

Vought is also involved in a radical form of curating in public spaces through her involvement with the Budget Gallery.

The Budget Gallery is not in a specific place. We don’t have a building, so we’re beyond low-rent. We don’t even pay rent. We set up our gallery in co-opted public spaces like vacant walls and fences. The shows are carefully co-ordinated, prepared, and publicized. The pieces are displayed much like a traditional gallery. We paint walls white, install art works and labels. We announce openings that are attended by hundreds. Refreshments are served and one can often hear jazz playing in the background. Of course, this is no traditional gallery - it’s all taking place on the sidewalk. In the end it’s a blend of all the greatest things about attending an art show, a garage sale, and a block party rolled into one.

Check out their project rules:

1. We use underutilized public spaces for our exhibitions.
2. If work doesn’t sell at the opening, it stays, in public, unguarded, for at least 1 week.
3. After the opening the unguarded work is sold on the honor system.
4. All art work in our shows will be sold, stolen*, or vandalized** and we can not pre-determine the outcome.
5. Our commission is arbitrary, optional, and determined by the artist.

*Having a work stolen is the highest honor of the Budget Gallery because it means someone wanted the work so badly they were willing to abandon personal and societal mores to acquire your piece of art. In our eyes, this may be considered a more valuable compliment to you than a simple monetary transaction.

**We suggest you consider vandalism a form a collaboration.

I find that a fascinating concept but also very challenging: it certainly brings up a lot of issues around letting go of control.

How would you feel about your work being shown in these circumstances? Could you deal with it? Would it upset you to have your work stolen from an unguarded public wall? Would it upset you more to have it vandalised?

I think I would have to make work especially for that space, with those aims in mind because if my regular art was stolen or vandalised I’d be upset. I actually had my degree show vandalised and even though I’d known beforehand that it was a possibility because of the extreme delicacy of the piece, I still had to go and cry in the toilets for a while!

I promised a round-up of the comments that other artists have left about their experiences with blogging and here it is, although much later than I’d planned…

Usiku from Writer’s Whirlpool writes:

Blogging has allowed me to reach and meet people that possess a range and depth of human experience, yet it reminds me there is a sameness to us all.

What a lovely sentiment, Usiku. One of the things I love most about blogging is the way it can encourage people reach out and help each other - I’ve seen everything from people offering words of sympathy to people giving real life support such as organising online baby showers, paying medical bills for ill bloggers, supporting families through bereavement or other difficult times, raising funds for charities or coming together to sponsor art projects.

I get so fed up of all the negative portrayals of the internet because it just doesn’t reflect my online experience. Blogging is frequently portrayed as a selfish and egotistical thing to do but I’ve often seen it used as a powerful and meaningful way to connect with other people.

Michelle from Pencil Portraits brings up a point I hadn’t considered:

Another benefit to blogging (for me anyway) is that when I am focussed on updating my blog regularly I am more productive in my art, because I can’t wait to post it. But I have noticed a definite correlation in lower productivity when I get slack about updating my blog, so even though it takes a bit of time to post, it is definitely worth it for so many reasons.

I love the idea of using a blog as a way of giving yourself motivation - great idea, Michelle!

Mark from Graf Nature Photography: Notes From The Woods writes:

I use my own blog for connecting with viewers of my own work, as well as exploration of my own feelings and analysis of why I do what I do. Turns out, a lot of readers often wonder the same about their own work. Sometimes it helps just to write things down to work out what you are thinking.

Oh, I couldn’t agree more, Mark. I’ve always used writing, and indeed, making my art, as a way to work out what I’m really thinking and feeling. I’ve always written about my work a lot so writing on a blog wasn’t that big a step